Guest Post by Jen Nadol: The Evolution of Writing

Today I am so excited and honored to have Jen Nadol guest post. Jen is the author of The Mark, her debut novel which was released earler this year and one of my top reads thsi year! Since she was in the process of editing book two, The Vision, I thought it would be interesting to see what she had learned….

I’d written almost all of this guest post about the evolution of my writing process from book one to book two when I realized it wasn’t telling the right story. I was focused on what changed between The Mark, published in January, and its sequel, Vision, due out in 2011. I hadn’t come up with a whole lot.

That’s because though The Mark is my first published book, it’s not the first one I wrote. To see …

All YA Love: Interview with Dawn Miller

Please give a warm to welcome Dawn Miller today! Her latest book, The Prophecy was released earlier this month.

The Monster Lover: Can you tell us about The Prophecy?

Dawn Miller: The Prophecy is the story of five unlikely heroes that are thrown into the middle of an angelic war breaking out across the planet…that no one else can see. The problem is, while they aren’t aware that they are the five prophesied about, the fallen know and put a bounty on their heads to take them out before they can become a threat to their plan. Thrown into a deadly race against time, the five are forced to search for the key to their past that unlocks the power to fight the fallen as they move into position for the final strike against mankind. …

All YA Love: Interview with Janet Fox

Today I am honored to share an interview with Janet Fox. Her debut, Faithful, is released next week (May 13th). Maggie looks like an interesting character and I am so curious to see how she deals with the hand she’s been dealt! I am excited to share with you an interview with Janet, so without further ado.. The Monster Lover: Can you tell us a bit about Faithful?

Janet Fox: Sure! Faithful is set mostly within Yellowstone National Park (hence the title, after Old Faithful geyser). It’s a love story, but it’s also a story about loss and renewal. Maggie, my main character, loses her mother under mysterious circumstances. This sets the story in motion and sends Maggie and her father from their Newport mansion to Yellowstone. Maggie is trapped by her position as a young society woman and may be forced to marry …

All YA Love: Interview with Bryan Davis + a Winner

I have an eclectic taste in books. In the blogging world, I’ve decided to focus on YA so to get the variety I crave, I read all over the map in terms of genre. I recently had the pleasure of reading Bryan’s fantasy novel, Starlight.

The Monster Lover: Can you tell us about the book?

Bryan Davis: Starlighter is a fantasy-world adventure. One hundred years before this story begins, a dragon from the dragon planet Starlight passed through a portal to the human world (called Major 4 by humans and Darksphere by dragons). He captured several human couples and took them back to Starlight where he enslaved them, forcing them to dig for pheterone, a gas the dragons needed to survive. After the humans procreated sufficiently, he killed those he kidnapped in order to erase the memory of a home world for the humans. One human escaped and returned to Major …

All YA Love: Giveaway & Guest Post by LM Preston

After reading so many books written by women with male main characters, I often wondered …how easy is it for a female author to write from a male’s perspective? Today, I am honored to have LM Preston stop by and provide some insight.

GIRL VS BOY: WHAT’s EASIER TO WRITE

Well, if you didn’t know it, I’m a female writer of young adult novels. My debut novel, Explorer X – Alpha’s main character was a male. A boy named Aadi that was fourteen years old is a stretch from a grown female writer that created him. For me though, writing a male was much more exciting than writing a female. My up coming book The Pack has a female, blind vigilante as the main character. Shamira was a lot harder for me to write than Aadi, simply because I take being female for granted.

Many authors I’ve met write …

All YA Love: Interview with Gene Fehler

Recently I had the chance to read Never Blame the Umpire and loved it. It is a Christian fiction book that provides comfort as Kate & her family deal with with her mom’s cancer. I think this book has so much to offer: the importance of love and living life to the fullest. I know this is a book that will be staying on my shelf and being pulled out when needed …hopefully not for a long time though!

I was also lucky enough to have a chance to chat with Gene about the book, I hope you enjoy!

The Monster Lover: Can you tell us about Never Blame the Umpire?

Gene Fehler: In Never Blame the Umpire, eleven-year-old Kate is having a happy and busy summer, playing baseball and tennis. She’s also taking a three-week poetry writing class. …

All YA Love: Interview with Y.S. Lee

Today I am honored to share an interview with Y.S. Lee. I recently had the pleasure of reading her debut A Spy In The House (The Agency #1)  and  loved this unique spin on the Victorian era.Can you tell us about the book?Spy is a novel about keeping secrets, uncovering truths, scheming women, and the Great Stink of 1858 (a disgusting heat wave that paralyzed the city of London). It’s also a zippy adventure and a lighthearted joke about mystery novels. It contains not a single vampire.

My favorite scene took place in the carriage as Mary & James talk marriage & sonnet sequences, I’m smiling just thinking about it. What was your favorite scene to write?I could write dialogue between Mary and James all day. I ended up pruning quite a lot of it because if I’d left it all in, the book …

All YA Love: Interview with Bonnie Doerr

It is our pleasure to have had an opportunity to talk with Bonnie Doerr, author of Island Sting.

Tell us a bit about ISLAND STING.

Telling about a novel I wrote should be an easy thing for me to do, right? But the book has been described so many ways by readers that I often don’t know how to approach this request. And, honestly, it’s more about what the book is to readers than what it is to me. So first I’ll use the thoughts and words of others to talk about it.

To ground the story, ISLAND STING is a contemporary adventure/mystery novel set in the Florida Keys. Though it’s often included on lists of YA reads (these days YA seems to stretch up to college age), it’s more for younger teens and tweens.

I get a kick out of stringing …

All YA Love: Guest Post on Fate by Irene Latham

It is our pleasure to have with us today Irene Latham, author of ‘LEAVING GEE’S BEND’.Fate, destiny, serendipity… whatever you want to call it, YES, I’m a believer.  I even wrote and published a poem once entitled “Creed,” which proclaimed, among other things, “I believe in serendipity,/ coincidence, random/ accidents that defy explanation/ because there is no explaining pain/ or the lack of it.”  And when I think about how I came to write LEAVING GEE’S BEND, I see all sorts of fateful occurrences, as if this story was inside me all along, waiting for me to finally get to a …

All YA Love: Judging a Book by it’s Cover #2 – Opposites

There were so many releases in YA during the month of March, it was so hard to narrow down the top 10. All credit to this post goes to my bestie, Jackie! I hope you enjoy it! It was fun to make 🙂 For more info, click on the title and/or author name.

SWEET VS SOUR

It’s Raining Cupcakes                              by Lisa Schroeder                                 

The Pickle King
by Rebecca Promitzer

GOOD VS EVIL

Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene
by Beatrice Gormley

                                                      The Dead-Tossed Waves       by …